Geospatial World Forum - Comprehensive Recap of News

If you were not able to attend the Geospatial World Forum in Hyderabad, India last week, we offer this list of our comprehensive coverage including news reports, interviews, videos and podcasts:

Video: Jill Smith, CEO of DigitalGlobe, Positions Company for Growth in the Commercial Satellite Industry

Video: Interview with Ola Rollѐn, CEO and President, Hexagon AB

Video: Kapil Sibal, Minister of Human Resources, Science & Technology Expands Vision of Geospatial Data, Education for India

Kapil Sibal, the Honorable Minister for Human Resources Development, Science & Technology, Earth Sciences, Communications and Information Technology addressed the Geospatial World Forum in Hyderabad, India on January 18, 2011 as the keynote speaker of the conference.

Podcast: Interview with Joel Campbell, President of ERDAS on “The Google Effect” and the Growth of Remote Sensing

Editor in chief Joe Francica interviews Joel Campbell, president of ERDAS, a GIS veteran and they spoke about the growth of the remote sensing business and the drivers of change within this industry.

Podcast: Interview with Terry Moloney, PCI Geomatics CEO, on Driving Image Processing Standards

In this podcast, editor in chief Joe Francica speaks with PCI Geomatics’ CEO Terry Moloney about the new initiatives of PCI in India, OGC standards for image processing, PCI’s relationship with Rolta, and the life of the late Dr. Robert Moses, PCI founder.

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Indian Infrastructure Development #GWF

For those of you who hear of the tremendous expansion of the infrastructure within India but don’t always get to see it, I wanted to offer these photos from Hyderabad (I took the photos while attending the Geospatial World Forum):

Rajiv Ghandi Airport (click for larger image) opened in 2009 and receives international flights direct from Abu Dhabi, Frankfurt, Dubai, and other cities. Other major Indian cities have also just opened new airports within the last 5 years including Mumbai and New Delhi.

Below is an image of a four-lane highway near the airport that wasn’t open two years ago when I visited. Other highways like this one were under construction as well.

Here’s another shot of the highway (Click for larger image)

The skyline looks like this in nearly all directions. Condos and office buildings are going up at a rapid pace.

Hyderabad is a city of over 6 million people in the metropolitan area.

Of Climate Change, Environmental Disaster and Geospatial Technology #GWF

Dr. F.  J. Radermacher, Director, Research Institute for Applied Knowledge Processing spoke to the Geospatial World Forum in Hyderabad, India.  His remarks focused on the how technology must be used to balance growth with environmental impacts. His comments are paraphrased below.

Geospatial technology is a wonderful field for mathematicians. India and China are the places where the future of humankind will be strongly influenced and about where we go with the enormous growth in population to be expected.

Can you guarantee the growth and stability of the country for years to come? The issues of sustainability are on the table along with the environment, the social side of life and the economy. The economy is important because we expect the goods to be delivered. [The economy] must serve the people and, but is must respect the environment as well to serve the people in the years to come. The economy is already over stressing the environment. A world of 7 billion people where 1 billion are rich but 6 billion that are emerging and relatively poor. Assuming that we deliver what we do today for a world with 10 billion people, it will result in an ecological disaster. One option: we could make people poorer but you sacrifice the people to save the environment. On the other hand, if you care for the dignity for the social side, this will be unsustainable. So is there a third way? We need growth in India but the growth must be neutral concerning the environment and concerning the climate.

The “joker” in this [solution] is technology. Technology is the key and in particular GIS technology. With innovation in technology we can deliver more goods and services to more people with less resources, if we do it right.  We somehow must guarantee that we have better options with less pollution and less emissions of climate gases. We need innovation in governments as much as we need innovations in technology.

It is not enough to have a free market system but you need a societal custom to take care of every individual to have access to education and health services.  Economic system is fine but you need a cultural framework under which this works. We live in a world of scarce resources.

USGS Director Lauds Landsat Virtues vs. Google Earth Engine

In a post to the Washington Post’s Post Carbon blog, USGS Director Marcia McNutt reminded everyone that Landsat data was the basis for the imagery used in Google’s new Google Earth Engine (see my APB post on GEE). As if to say, "hey the USGS had a hand in collecting the data…don’t forget about us," Ms. McNutt exposed the largest glaring weakness of our earth observation program: It doesn’t shout loud enough about its investment, and the ROI on that investment, of remotely sensed data. Since the launch of the Landsat-1 in 1972, satellite data has been under appreciated by the masses and certainly under marketed by the USGS. Until Google Earth.

It is fundamental to the longevity of the the Landsat program that the USGS do a better job of promoting the benefits but has rated a grade of "D" in my book. Since my days working as a contractor for the USGS at the EROS Data Center in the early-80’s, I always felt that if the only people who could afford data were the universities with huge government grants and the oil companies, then the applications of satellite data where never going to be well understood. Thankfully Google Earth changed that. Maybe its only a private company that could afford to turn pixels into pearls…those of the wisdom kind. Because now, the world knows about satellite data. And now, the world will use satellite data. And now perhaps even businesses will use satellite data, like those counting cars in parking lots on Black Friday. Let’s hope word reaches our Congressmen who need to fund the program. Perhaps they will have already learned how to spin the Google Earth Globe to find their house. Maybe GE will turn politicians into pixel heads.

Bentley Systems #BeInspired 2010 Event Opens with Congratulations to “Resilient” Users of Infrastructure Solutions

The economic climate from 2008 through mid-2010 has been challenging to some sectors of the world where infrastructure projects were put on hold. This is reflected in the success of those companies providing engineering and design software like Autodesk who sustained a decline and stock price (the company has since recovered nicely) and the Bentley Systems whose revenue declined in 2009 to levels seen in 2007, or about $50 Million. Greg Bentley, in his opening presentation at the BeInspired conference, said however that he believes that 2010 will show a rebound in his revenue run rate. Currently, Bentley shows a revenue balance of 61% international users versus 39% in the United States.

Bentley also showed a number of metrics to demonstrate the number of hours in which MicroStation was in use. MicroStation utilization hours measured approximately 23 hours per week per license (see example image from Asia at right). As such, though the global economy may be weak, productivity was decidedly increasing. On the investment front, Bentley made a major investment in SITEOPS , engineering software for site design which the company says is a glimpse into the future of SaaS for civil modeling.

Bhupinder Singh, Bentley’s senior vice president for software, discussed a number of initiatives for the company during the past year that resulted in product improvements including:

• Bentley update service – a web service that will give you notification when updates are available. Users can even set up filters whereby they will be notified on the subset of products in which they are interested to receive updates.
• Luxology is now embedded completely into MicroStation for civil visualization, an announcement that was made last May.
• Point Clouds are now a native data type inside of Bentley products
• In SELECTseries 3, to be released in 2011, users will be able to detect clashes between geometry and point cloud data.
• Integrated Structural Modeling (ISM) is a model synchronization solution that provides federation, consensus modeling and collaboration services. ISM was released one year ago and Singh said he as seen in increase in its use by engineering firms.
• Multidiscipline optimization (MDO) is a solution for determining cost benefit of alternative solutions for design structural designs versus the applications under consideration from multiple disciplines such as design, construction, energy analysis, etc. This methodology is used to help balance cost when weighing multiple design options. MDO is a non-deterministic methodology whereby there may be more than one answer to a given problem.

In general, Bentley is trying to layout a framework for instituting business intelligence (BI) for the engineering community that they call “information modeling.” Whereby the enterprise geospatial community may think in terms of integrating location technology into enterprise BI solutions, Bentley’s focus on design engineering translates that concept into deriving information by visualizing design improvements and reaping better return on assets (ROA). They seem to be more in tune with performance metrics rather than qualitative assessment for utilizing technology to help their clients demonstrate this ROA.

The BeInspired 2010 conference is an annual event for Bentley’s most innovative clients and awards are issued to selected nominees from those who have submitted entrees. In addition, over 60 members of the press are here for this event. I am serving as a juror for the "Visualization and Project Collaboration" category.

[Full disclosure: Bentley is supporting this trip with travel expenses]